Residents worry about trauma’s long-term effects ‘Going home is when reality sets in’

From kindergarten and grade school at Sacré Coeur through high school and CEGEP, the five were inseparable. Even at 30, with planes to catch and babies on the way, the friends found time to get together whenever all of them were back in town.

Now four of those men are missing and believed to be among the dead, victims of the explosions and fire that devoured the heart of this town of 6,000 people when a runaway train hauling crude oil travelling at deafening speed derailed at 1:14 a.m. Saturday.

When community officials gave the go-ahead Tuesday for roughly 1,200 residents to return to their homes, there was a neat list of dos and don’ts waiting at the door of 610 dwellings and 50 businesses. Open windows to clear the air. Sweep soot off the floors and lawn. Take care not to drink the tap water and be prepared for frequent power outages and wonky Internet service in the days and weeks to come.

For the 800 residents who still have no idea when they will go home, there was frustration and resignation.

“I can stay with my daughter as long as I have to,” said Antoinette Paré, 78, who has been staying with one of her daughters in Val des Bois. “But it’s way out in the country. I miss my Bingo and going out for my morning coffee.”

But some residents of this tight-knit community believe the biggest challenges — for those going home, but also for the broader community — can’t be wiped away with a damp cloth and a squirt of Febreeze.

As the number of confirmed dead climbed to 20 – Sûreté du Québec lists 50 people as missing while the coroner’s lab in Montreal tries to identify the remains – Mayor Colette Laroche-Roy, police and fire officials said their team was slowly working to bring life back to normal.

Fire chief Denis Lauzon said firefighters, working 10 to 12 hours a day wearing thick, insulated suits in the sweltering heat, had managed to control the smouldering ruins.

To preserve the crime scene, Lauzon said fire crews would no longer hose down the site, relying on infrared sensors to keep a watchful eye on the temperature of oil tanks at the core of the accident scene. Those that did not explode are believed to hold the same type of crude oil that set the town and even the lake aflame.

But Lauzon said members of his own force are no longer assigned to the disaster scene. “It’s a small town and everybody knows somebody,” Lauzon said, saying he needs to minimize the risk of post-traumatic stress for his team.

“Everyone is mourning, everyone is in trauma,” said Jo Cooper, who signed up to help at the makeshift shelter at the high school first thing Saturday morning.

“Certain people are happy to go home, but at the same time, it is bittersweet. The whole town is in mourning. Even if they go home, they have to continue living with the reality that changed everything forever on Friday night.”

Cooper was born in Manitoba and came to Lac-Mégantic with her husband 40 years ago. Since the disaster, she has been helping out in the kitchen and handing out water. But she sees her true task as listening to people re-live their stories and try to come to terms with their horror, anger and uncertainty.

“Going home is when reality sets in,” said Cooper, who heard the early-morning explosions from her home five kilometres away on the road toward Saint-Georges de Beauce.

“Here they are supported, surrounded with a lot of support. Especially the elderly. They go home to probably no groceries or having to face the fact that their grocery store is not functioning and their pharmacy is displaced.”

“When you are alone and you have nothing to do, you think. And you relive. And you imagine,” said Meghan Plamondon, another volunteer at the shelter who can’t help thinking about the after-effects so common among people who have experience tragedy on a monstrous scale.

“I know a little bit about what to expect because of 9/11,” said Plamondon, a New York native who moved to Lac-Mégantic 31 year ago with her husband, the local chiropractor.

“I had a brother in one of the towers. I had a brother on Wall St. who was in lockdown. I had a brother in Washington by the Pentagon and we didn’t know if he was dead or alive. We found out hours and hours later that he was alive. This wakes all of those emotions and you’ve just got to talk it through.”

“I know the survivors’ guilt that is going to come. I know the stress of not having a job because your job is gone. I know how it is going to affect people. The rate of suicide goes up, drugs and alcohol abuse go up. I know what is coming,” said Plamondon.

She’s struck by the story of Geneviève Breton, a 28-year-old singer from the area who had appeared on the TV series Star Académie. She was outside the Musi-Café Saturday morning.

“She was there with her boyfriend. They were running for their lives, the two of them. If me and a guy run at the same time, the guy is going to get a little faster. He made it, and she didn’t.

“He’s not doing well. Can you imagine? If you and your sister ran, and one of you didn’t make it?”

Plamondon’s house wasn’t among those evacuated, although the train tracks run close to her property.

“The windows are open and you hear this noise. You know the speed of a train. You know the noise of a normal train. You get used to it after 31 years. You say, ‘That’s not a fast train.’ That’s like a jet plane going by you. It was like, whoa.”

Perhaps because of the mountains and the way the wind was blowing, the Plamondons didn’t hear the explosions. It wasn’t until they woke up in the morning, tried to use the Internet and turned on the television that they found out what had happened only a few blocks from their house.

“My husband turned on the television. He saw the word ‘Apocalypse’ and the mushroom cloud. He thought Egypt. Then he looked down and it said Lac-Mégantic.”

As the couple ran outside to see what had happened, their four children were trying to reach them, sending frantic appeals on Facebook to anyone who might have seen their parents.

Their oldest son, Christopher, had the most cause for alarm.

“He lost his four best friends from when he was growing up,” Plamondon said. Among them was a friend, visiting from his home in Switzerland, and another who had come up from Quebec without his girlfriend, who was due to give birth any day.

Her son had seen them at the Musi-Café the previous week.

“I am so blessed. I am blessed he wasn’t there,” she said. “It would have been me. It would have been us.”

Karine Blanchette, a waitress at the popular night spot who left only minutes before the explosion, said she has been trying to fill her days helping people, but the shock is wearing off and reality is now setting in.

“I think the worst is coming,” Blanchette said, worrying about the impact when people see the names of all who died and gain access to the main street.

“I think it will be like a punch. I know I am not ready to see downtown. I just saw the pictures and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to go there.’ ”

Cooper, who works at an organic food store that was not destroyed in the fire, is a great believer in the therapeutic value of allowing people to tell their stories.

“I am here to listen to people. Hug people. Tell people that I care. Give them water. Just be there.

“We don’t have any direct family affected. What we are doing here is for everybody else who can’t.”

Stories of kindness, personal and corporate, have abounded this week. The Red Cross has been overwhelmed with cash donations, as well as food, clothing and offers to help.

At the local Tim Horton’s, regional manager Steven Wintle and Mike Nadeau, corporate vice-president for Quebec and the Maritime provinces, said gifts of bottled water and teddy bears for kids are a small part of the story. Three members of the staff in Lac-Mégantic lost their homes this week. Many wait anxiously for news of missing loved ones.

Plamondon has been noticing how carefully people have been speaking to friends and acquaintances since the accident.

“If you see somebody, first off you know it wasn’t them. And then you ask, ‘How’s the family?’ If they can talk, it wasn’t anyone their immediate family.

“And then you say, ‘And everybody else? And that’s when you hear, ‘My son’s girlfriend. My cousin, my niece. Everybody has somebody. Nobody is not touched.”